KDubya

I liked the ending in Tyranny better than in PoE. In PoE I was just tired of the whole thing by the time I finally trudges through the final Act. It felt like the various choices around the gods and who to support were all the same. I actually went with the bad god Wodica or whatever her name was because I cared nothing about the people in the world and since all I ever did was try to amass personal power, she had the best offer. In Tyranny the ending left you fresh and wanting more. Much tighter focus. Also the ending slides where they describe what happened in the world and with your companions were much better than in PoE. I also liked the Tyranny got away from Vancian casters. They are great in a tabletop style with a real dungeon master but fail badly in a crpg. PoE did much better than BGII did in that regard but they still are quadratic instead of linear. P.S. I am really enjoying javelins in Tyranny, first game I've ever seen them done justice.

I'm not a huge fan of these meters actually, and tend to wish they were hidden or at least hideable via the options menu. Any option that says "Durance needs to like you 56 for you to say this!" or "You said a thing Durance likes, he now likes you 138!" takes me right out of the experience. I'm generally not a huge fan of displayed qualifiers as it's not very immersive and makes me want to pick the option I quality for regardless of what it is (even strengthened in Tyranny by learning by doing system - I mean, when I get a lore option with a mage, I'd be dumb not to pick it, whatever it is), but at least you can hide those in Pillars. it doesn't show numbers on the like/dislike scale (which I agree would be terrible), it shows a bar scale and where you obtain the various powers. The list below showing why you have the value that you do also does not have any numbers, just hash marks showing the magnitude of the occurrences. I think it strikes a nice balance between not having any clue as to why things happen and the number scenario that you describe (which is not in the game)

Personally I much prefer Chanters to Priest so that's where I'd make room but both are good. Early game I take the two Chanter regen auras straight away, when stacked with Veteran's Recovery you'll hardly need healing. Add in Shod in Faith on the Monk and you have Wolverine Fair enough on the Paladin choices for Resolve, I agree that that gets the best 'hard ass' responses in dialogue. For Zahua maybe drop Rooting Pain for Swift/Lightning Strikes. It's not a deal breaker either way, mainly just preference. If you like to get the reviving exhortation might as well get some use out of it with a "Dirt Nap" Barbarian. Take all the talents that help with getting KO'd and make a 'Spiteful Bastard' who dies, gets back up swinging, dies, gets back up swinging .... I think there is a build in the sticky based on this premise.

General suggestion Add in Veteran's Recovery early, it greatly enhances your survivability. Fit a Chanter in the team if at all possible. They are just great and make everything better. Their two regen auras combined with Veteran's recovery make you heal faster than the incoming damage (mostly) Like K Galen B said above I'd take the +accuracy talents early. Missing at low levels is what makes PotD difficult. For the PaladinI'd drop Resolve and add to Might for better heals and damage I'd take Lay on Hands first. The two massive heals will help the team a lot more than two FoD, especially before you have arquebus. I'd take Sacred Immolation at the earliest possible, level 13 it is the best ability I'd drop Reviving Exhortation for anything, Reinforcing Exhortation is useful for Devil to help her survive in melee without a shield. Your team should not be getting KO'd and if they do there are scrolls. Not worth a talent in my opinion. For ZahuaI did not see Lightning Strikes in there. I find the +25% attack speed and +25% lightning lash to be very useful For the MageI'd make everything a ten and then add the rest to Perception, Intellect and then if you are going for damage add to Might, if mainly crowd control ten is enough. I'd look to make him a blaster mage with implements, very useful early when spells are limited. There is a good template in the builds section, by Boereor I believe.

I'd look at getting Intellect back up to a 10. Fighter's have lots of duration based abilities that'd be gutted with a super low intellect. Unless you are planning a build that uses entirely different abilities than the more common ones, then it can work. As far as attack speed goes dual wielding and the two weapon fighting alone will get you pretty fast in attack speed. Adding in the cross class frenzy (which has its duration controlled by Intellect) will get you closer to zero recovery.

Two Paladins are great on a team. You get four FoD strikes, four LoH, two auras, two Sacred Immolations, and four reinforcing exhortations. They make for a really solid core of a team. Add in a Chanter for the regen auras and chants and you have all the bases covered and the rest of the team can be whatever you want. That said, you can't go wrong with a Cipher. If you want guns I'd suggest going with a Pirate Island Aumaua with a pistol, blunderbuss and a single sabre. You can shoot, shoot and then use all that focus, then wade into the flanks and slice and dice which will generate focus faster than any sort of ranged attack. The single weapon will help a lot with accuracy issues, especially early.

I like the plot, and especially the effects of choices made. It feels like things you do matter. I like the fact that you are important to the whole world and plot and not some obscure Watcher. I like the way skills work like subterfuge. It is way better than the useless, but oh so necessary, mechanics from PoE. Really all of the skills feel useful. I like the way I can mouseover words in dialogues and get extra information. I like the world and how it feels real, never really got that from PoE. So far liking the game, but their forums leave a lot to be desired. Really wish they had some here where we could go to and have adult conversations rather than the multitude of zero reply posts to questions.

Lesser wounds is trash, sorry to be harsh but it is. I'd pick all of the enemy specific +25% damage abilities long before I'd even think about taking lesser wounds. Getting wounds is easy, just put the Monk in the front. The enemy tends to shoot the first thing they see and that'll be the Monk. Especially casters will fire off their missile spells and the Monk will have 6-10 wounds in the first few seconds. That opens up a Flagellant's Path right through the pack and a few Torment's to the casters.

The beauty of dual fist Monks, besides the obvious style, is that it free's up enchanting supplies for the rest of your team. Durgan steel is a limited resource and a melee guy can require three pieces for armor and weapons/shield/two hander. A Monk can get by with just one for his armor or even none if he goes with the soulbound breastplate. Also fist hit as hard as average speed weapons but as fast as fast speed weapons. The fact that they auto update is also great throughout the game. At level four you won't have fine weapons of your choosing but a Monk will have his fists effectively upgraded to fine automatically. In all of my playthroughs with Monks on the team (solo might be different, but I have no interest in solo), dual fists have never disappointed and have always led the team in damage by a bunch.

This has been a pleasant place to come and discuss things in a respectful manner. Too bad more places were not like this on the net. It has been a pleasure, KW

Probably best to leave politics out of PoE. Some take the future of America rather seriously and this could quickly go way off topic. We all come here to get away from the grim reality that is the world, lets leave it at that

I'd look to make the monk use fists instead of weapons. It free's up weapons and crafting supplies for the others. It's only when fully optimized and durganized that fists are ever challenged for supremacy by weapons and you have a whole team that needs to be upgraded. With that I'd also go with a Juggernaut 3.0 with high con and might. Instead of a Rogue, who are pretty lackluster, why not go with a Chanter? They'll be only one point lower on mechanics but will help the whole party, especially a melee team. With the two regen auras they can keep the whole team in Wolverine mode. Since everyone is using weapons I'd go for the +25% fire lash that'd help the whole team rather than just stacking Dragon Thrashed. This also leaves room in the chants to weave in some nice buffs and debuffs. I find the fear chant that you get at level two is a great debuff to enemy accuracy. Shield and tanky works well as does two handed reach. With a melee heavy team getting to the enemies is sometimes troublesome but reach weapons solve this, especially at early levels with doorways. Another nice Pike for the carnage Barbarian is the Lost Thayn's Reach (I think that is it's name), the one that debuffs accuracy on hit that you can but in Copperlane. No need for getting a crit like Tall Grass needs, just get the hit. With that debuff and the fear chant going the enemy has like -15 to hit you. Run the Zealous Endurance aura as well as your team will mainly get grazed which will get absorbed by your heavy armor. With Veteran's Recovery on everyone but the ranged Ranger and the two Chanter regen auras you'll be very durable. A team like that doesn't have trouble with much at all and when they do they still have figurines and scrolls. Nothing sorts out a tough bounty fight like a couple of high accuracy confusion scrolls as an alpha strike. Plus there are so many items with spells for casting that you won't miss the casters, just have a spell weapon in the other slot and use it and then swap to a different spell weapon next fight.

Set Zahua up as Juggernaut 3.0 and give him the superb hide armor from White March area and the Bartender's ring for the extra damage versus spirits. His damage output from lightning strikes and torment's reach should drop the spirits pretty quickly. Also get him the Shod in faith boots. How is Devil built? I find using a stunning weapon like Cladhliath or Starcaller flail with balgrdr barricade shield works well as a tanky Rogue. Also don't be afraid to drop down a few figurine summons to help, they make a big difference even just as cannon fodder.

A Chanter can do his thing every single fight. No need to hold back spells, no need to rest just go all in every time. Ciphers are also like this, I really dislike the per rest type. Personally I prefer having the +25% fire lash as the focal point of my chants instead of Dragon Thrash. With my team of hard hitting melee - Juggernaut 3.0, Devil. Kana and Pellaginna - the extra lash helps everyone hit even harder. Plus since it does not stack on itself it gives me the ability to weave in another chant rather than just stacking Dragon Thrash and waiting for everything to die. At the start, the only really tough time, a Chanter with Ancient memory and the other regen chant makes a huge difference as does the +10 fortitude. much better than a Priest at low levels in my opinion unless you are planning on resting all the time. If you also take Veteran's Recovery you really don't ever need the Priest. If I need to use the immunity spells, which I usually don't, you can just get them from scrolls.

I just got Civilization 6 so will be tied up for awhile. Also want to wait and see how Tyranny gets reviewed, browsing their forums raises some concerns as to how 'being evil' is actually going to be handled. Call me a skeptic but I'm taking a wait and see approach.

Honestly, I'd not dump Resolve so much, especially in the early game and especially if you don't want to spend much time on the ground. Similarly for Barbarians I'd avoid dropping Constitution below 10. I'd probably go with something more like Mig 16 Con 10 Dex 12 Per 14 Int 16 Res 10 Explanation: Obviously Might and Intellect are important for a damage dealing Barbarian but unlike in some RPG rulesets all attributes scale linearly in PoE so you don't have the same impetus to chase max values. Barbarians have the highest Health and Endurance multipliers, which means they suffer more from the percentage decrease from Constitution below 10 (and gain more from above 10) so I avoid going below 10 on Barbarians. The Dexterity score is perhaps debatable: in the early game Dexterity is important for attack speed but at level 7 the Barbarian gets access to Blood Thirst which makes attack speed much less important, and even before this the speed bonuses from Frenzy and Bloodlust make having lower Dexterity less important. In fact I'd even consider lowering Dexterity to 10. Barbarians have comparatively low accuracy for a melee class, so I like to make up for this with a few points in Perception. I am others will disagree with this choice though. Finally, the above attribute spread gives a nice balance of defences i.e. you get +12 to all of Fortitude, Reflex and Will, whereas your original spread suffers from low Will. To expand on JerekKruger's advice I'd drop the dexterity to 10 and add it to Con. Once you get the ability that gets zero recovery after a kill (bloodthirst?) your dex won't matter as much while have 10% more of a large endurance pool will really change your ability to stay vertical in a fight. I'd even look to take it even further with: Boreal Dwarf - for the look and for the +15 accuracy versus the most common enemies. But Pale Elf will work fine as well Might - 16 - more damage and more healing Con - 16 - your endurance pool and health will be Yuge! Dex - 10 - good enough when the zero recovery kicks in Per - 10 - losing 4 accuracy is better when you can get +30% endurance Int - 16 - better duration and carnage area Res - 10 - don't want to be interrupted all the time, can still get high enough with boosts to talk down the Alpine Dragon if you want Your reflex is lower but your all important fortitude defence is higher. Suffering a reflex attack gets you damaged, suffering a fortitude attack gets you stunned or worse. Take Veteran's Recovery for the regen early and be unkillable. Start with heavy armor and lighten it up as desired as you get more and more endurance.

It just bothers me to see something like 10% complete when I've put in hundreds of hours. I don't have to get 100% or anything OCD but the not awarding the basic % complete bothers me. Plus it lets me gauge how much of the game remains or what I've missed.

You could just slap a burning lash enchantment, and a Spirit Slaying enchantment on any old Exceptional weapon and do just fine. You can make these at like level 4 if you have the Exceptional, have to wait until level 8 to make from scratch or upgrading a Fine. Plus since the ingredients are from vendors you can make as many as you want. Make another for Vessel slaying and swap as need be. Hell you could make a set for every type of enemy and just scout and swap before each fight. Other than St Ydwen Redeemer nothing does anything to Spirits and Vessels that you couldn't just build yourself. Better that than using multiple weapon foci.

Once I accepted the fact that rolling for hours trying to get high enough stats to build the character that I wanted was not fundamentally different than just editing the stats via Shadowkeeper I was a much happier (power)gamer. My half orc fighter/cleric with 19 str, 19 con, 18 dex and 18 wis was a chainsaw when dual wielding his flails. had a blast taking him all the way to TOB with Tutu and SCS. As far as the Steam achievements go, for some reason it bothers me to see ones uncompleted that were completed while using a mod. So I'll go and use the f4se for Fallout 4 just to get around that. In ciV I remember rolling games on Chieftain just to quickly stomp the AI so that the achievement would get marked off. At least in civ6 they have the achievements set for winning a game at this or a harder difficulty level so a win at Deity would check off all the other eight difficulty levels.

I'd go with a Chanter in the mix as well. With the two regen auras from the Chanter and if each guy in the frontline, the ones likely to take damage often, takes Veteran's Recovery early, like at level two or four, you'll have a Wolverine party that will be nigh unkillable. You won't miss any heals from the Priest as you'll be regenning endurance faster than the incoming damage. In cases where you need even more healing you'll have the Paladin's two Lay on Hands per encounter. For extra durability I'd go with Zealous Endurance for the Paladin aura. The DR is nice but the hit to graze conversion is the hidden gem, it drastically reduces damage and durations on some (all?) status effects. A melee Ranger with Tidefall or Drawn in Spring will do massive pet damage due to the DoT. Look at Boereor's Riptide Ranger build in the stickies.

The Juggernaut build has always been based on a Boreal Dwarf. I consider them to be the best race for a Monk, higher Con and Might are everything a Monk wants and the extra accuracy is great. For that matter I consider a Boreal Dwarf to be one of the best races for any offensive class.

To make any character, especially a Paladin, more immersive turn off the dialogue descriptors. If not you'll probably find yourself looking for the exact response you need - benevolent and passionate and not read anything else or at least not consider anything else. With the descriptors turned off you'll need to read all of them and choose what you think best fits. For this I find Kind Wayfarer the best, the key is to avoid any negative responses which are cruel and deceitful. Its easy to avoid deceitful just always tell the straight up truth, if you are infiltrating undercover and someone asks tell them you are undercover and deal with the consequences. Doing this I still ended up with max benevolent and passionate but also had max aggressive as it felt similar to passionate. I ended up as an avenging force of justice and still never had any negative cruel or deceitful points.

Can you get the achievement with one insomniac - the MC, and five hired mercs who you replace as they get tired? If so I bet you could do it with like one rest. With regards to the five Bears for the Rangers, I'd swap them for the Boars. I find the faster attack rate plus the higher endurance from their high con to be more useful than the +3 DR.

Disagree, if you don't want to respec max INT is mandatory. If you respec at 13 I would be fine with 10 INT, 3 seems a bit extreme FoD is only 2 shots per encounter, while aura range is pretty important. Disclaimer - This is all based on group play at PotD, solo might be a very different animal - Why is max Intellect necessary? How big does your aura need to be? - Just big enough to cover the team members that you need it to, anything bigger is wasted. If you have a group at the frontlines and some dress wearers hiding 4+ meters away in the back then maybe you need a bigger aura. I keep my teams close together and for me a 10 Intellect (14 with easy items and food which can be up 100% of the time) is plenty of aura range. How big of an area and how long duration does Sacred Immolation need? - Again enemies tend to clump around the melee scrum and a 10 Intellect gets a big enough area to get them all or at least enough of them. Plus the duration at 14 Intellect is like 36 seconds which is plenty, most everything is dead by then and if not its pretty close to it. As long as the points not placed in Intellect are placed somewhere that furthers your build and playstyle then I'd say that you are fine. I like to make a Paladin with everything at ten and then distribute the remaining 18 points among whatever I want to focus on.

If you don't want to retrain (something I try and avoid), sticking with a 10 Intellect works fine for a Paladin. With an item and some food you'll have a 14. This is plenty for an aura, and duration of your abilities. Dumping to a 3 might help a Goldpact with his enduring flames damage but will really screw his LoH, exhortations and everything else that a Paladin can do. Not saying you can't make a fringe build work its just why would you bother other than to show that you can? Now if they had dumb conversations like Fallout had then it'd be a whole nother story. Too bad they don't make them like that anymore.